Lee’s Flowers and Card Shop co-owner Stacie Lee Banks (left), designer Matthew Johnson (second from left) and co-owner Kristie Lee Jones (right) instruct U.S. Small Business Administrator Isabella Guzman on arranging flowers. Guzman spoke to the media about the importance of Small Business Saturday from the Washington D.C. flower shop. Photo courtesy of Lee’s Flowers and Card Shop.
Mondays are hectic days for deliveries at Lee’s Flower and Card Shop. The Monday before Thanksgiving is especially busy, and co-owner Stacie Lee Banks hesitated at the prospect of hosting an event at the shop that day.
But the opportunity to host Isabella Casillas Guzman, the head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, was too good to pass up, Banks says.
“It was an honor to have her here,” she says.
Banks’ store is a third-generation owned business and is also the oldest black-owned flower shop in the D.C. area, making it a good backdrop for Guzman to chat with reporters about the importance of supporting locally owned businesses on Small Business Saturday.
Banks and her staff put a desk in front of shelves of live plants. They added a few books to prop up Guzman’s laptop and then for four hours on Nov. 22, the SBA head fielded questions from journalists — in English and Spanish — via Zoom.
“She did her interviews,” Banks explained, “and in between, she came back and we showed her how to make a centerpiece for her Thanksgiving table. She did a really good job, too. I’d hire her.”
While designing a basket with bronze and yellow fall flowers — pom poms and roses intermixed with solidago — Banks was able to chat with Guzman and they found they shared a common background. Both were raised as the daughters of small business owners. Guzman’s father was a veterinarian and she told Banks that she assisted at the practice’s reception desk.
Banks and her sister, Kristie Lee Jones, the shop’s co-owner, started working when they were kids helping their dad, Rick Lee, at the flower shop that he inherited from his parents, William and Winifred Lee. The Lees purchased the building in D.C., which is within walking distance of the Howard University campus, and founded the flower shop in 1945. The sisters took over the business in 2012 when their father retired.
Banks, a member of the Society of American Florists’ board of directors, appreciated that Guzman mentioned Lee’s Flowers and Card Shop in each of her interviews. She also appreciated that a local Fox affiliate station came to interview her the morning of Small Business Saturday.
Nona Nelson is a contributing writer for the Society of American Florists.
